Phishing is an email message designed to look like it has come from a reputable source, with the aim of getting readers to change a password, fill out additional personal information or download an application or virus onto the recipients' computer. Phishing is intended to gain information that can be used to hack into businesses or steal an identity - and your employees should be made aware of how to avoid these scams.

Modern businesses transmit sensitive, confidential and otherwise important data through email on a daily basis. From personally identifiable client information to proprietary company data, many businesses have good reason to be interested in improving their email security. But email security only begins with an improvement in technology -- to be truly successful, a company's security measures must also involve employee training.

Shadow IT sounds sinister, like the dark side of IT, but in truth shadow IT often has good motives and at worst it is usually just misguided. Usually, shadow IT is the result of employees trying to do their job better, and using their initiative to solve problems that they perceive as important and neglected by the organization or by IT.

As such, shadow IT is an organizational problem, and typically can be countered by organizational solutions.

Software-defined WANs are transforming how businesses manage connectivity. With cloud computing, the internet of things, widespread mobile device use, and an increasingly distributed workforce converging, businesses need their network to accomplish flexibility and performance that has been either impossible or cost prohibitive in the past. SD-WAN technologies are changing these dynamic, empowering organizations to optimize their networks and ramp up performance in a cost-efficient way.

The IT disaster recovery sector tends to be highly reactive, rather than proactive, in nature. Businesses will often neglect to prepare for disasters until they are hit full on or experience a close call. Then, suddenly, disaster recovery is a priority. It seems like every blizzard, hurricane, or large-scale power outage brings a new reminder that companies need to prepare for emergencies.

But what about organizations that want to be proactive? What should they be doing to get ready for the coming year?

IT disaster recovery and business continuity strategies have generally been fairly segmented from one another in the past. Business continuity plans would often focus on key issues such as employee safety, keeping certain mission-critical systems running regardless of a disaster, and preventing downtimes from having an adverse impact on the organization. Disaster recovery, on the other hand, focuses on responding to an incident that causes an outage or data loss event.

Video has become a hot topic in the enterprise world. With videoconferencing becoming more accessible all the time and employees easily able to shoot a quick video via phone and share it over work social media accounts, organizations have an opportunity to engage workers and collaborate in exciting ways. However, using video consistently puts a significant strain on the network. Any real-time data format can run into major performance problems in the event that packets are dropped or delayed.

Cloud communications technologies have already changed how people collaborate in the workplace, establishing a foundation for more flexible, intuitive communication. In many ways, the rise of cloud services with integrated communications functionality represents a convergence of related trends. Voice and video are commonly delivered over IP networks, making it easier to integrate core functionality into apps and services.

The data center without walls movement began to gain momentum in the early 2010s. Since then, conversations around the concept have dwindled, but only because the situation has become so prevalent that it isn't trendy any more. Maintaining a data center without traditional boundaries is simply a reality of enterprise IT operations today.